Heat exchangers are well known for thermally conditioning solids, liquids, and/or gases. Numerous heat exchanger configurations exist that are tailored for heating and/or cooling the temperature of solid, liquid, and/or gas of a system or device over a prolonged period or optimized for relatively short bursts of heat or cooling. For example, a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) typically uses short bursts (i.e., minutes or seconds) of heating and cooling to maintain fluids and/or gases at relatively constant temperatures.
Short burst cooling and heating is currently provided by evaporation of cryogenic fluids and fired heaters or electrically heated packed beds, respectively. However, these cooling and heating mechanisms are complex. In addition, these cooling and heating mechanisms are better suited for operations over extended periods (i.e., hours, days or weeks).
Phase-change materials have shown promise for thermal conditioning. Phase-change materials, such as paraffin waxes, provide large heat capacities over narrow temperature ranges. Therefore, phase-change materials have desirable characteristics that can be used to heat or cool at high power levels. However, phase-change materials tend to have low thermal conductivities that make it difficult to transfer heat into and out of the phase-change material, which reduces the suitability for short burst cooling.
Accordingly, it is desirable to compensate for the low thermal conductivity of phase-change materials so that such a material can be used in high power and short burst thermal conditioning. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.